The Adventurers Club hosted its final public event on September 27, 2008, closing along with the rest of Pleasure Island. Petitions to save the club earned thousands of signatures in a matter of days. But Park Lore readers already know what kind of good that does…
The Adventurers Club remained operable for another year, during which time it was available only for private rentals. Appropriately, on the last day its doors opened – September 25, 2009 – it was rented out to the Congaloosh Society, Inc. – a Florida nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of interactive improvisational theater.
Much of Pleasure Island was standing but not operating from that point forward, awaiting the cancelled Hyperion Wharf rebirth that would never come. Demolition took place in 2011. But as we know, good ideas never die at Disney… While some of the Club’s props returned to their original, globetrotting owner (Joe Rohde), many of the stories and set pieces were scattered around the globe…
The Society of Explorers and Adventurers
At least in part, Disney fans seem to agree that the Adventurers Club set the stage for something even more grand…
The Society of Explorers and Adventures (S.E.A) is perhaps the grandest tale ever told by Imagineers. A cross-continental frame story, the mythology of S.E.A. is interwoven into rides, shows, and restaurants around the world, uniting Disney Parks continents apart into one massive continuity.
Take, for example, the spectacular Modern Marvel: Tower of Terror at Tokyo DisneySea, which – without the well-known Twilight Zone story applied to the other Towers – tells of one of S.E.A.’s early members, Harrison Hightower, who traveled the globe stealing priceless artifacts to hoard in his palatial New York hotel… until New Year’s Eve 1899 when he draws the ire of one of his own cursed idols, dooming himself and his hotel by way of a penthouse-bound elevator.
Since the Adventurers Club opened long before the first official S.E.A. references (which debuted with Tokyo DisneySea in 2001), we can say for certain that the Adventurers Club wasn’t originally intended to integrated into S.E.A.’s story.
However, Imagineers later added a few clever retro-continuity nods added to the club. During its final years, the Adventurers Club’s walls of mementos, news clippings, and artifacts displayed a letter from president Pamela Perkins discussing Hightower and how “his idol really took him for a ride.” Even if an outright in-universe connection between the two was only hinted at retroactively, in the real world, it’s clear that the Adventurers Club inspired S.E.A.’s style, substance, and story.
You can read our comprehensive list of all the interconnected attractions in this continent hopping, globetrotting adventure story – S.E.A.: The Society of Explorers and Adventurers.
Inspired by Adventure
But perhaps most phenomenally, a number of restaurants were almost certainly directly inspired by The Adventurers Club and Disney’s recurring attempts to revive its adventurous spirit – and sometimes, its stories and characters, too…
1. L’Explorers Club (Disneyland Paris, 1992)
Location: Disneyland Paris
Opened: 1992
When Disneyland Paris opened in 1992, the ambitious and decadent park was instantly recognized as an icon of Imagineering. Somehow, the European anchor manages to merge the coziness and detail of Disneyland with the size and grandeur of Magic Kingdom.
When crafting the park from scratch, Disney’s designers had been told in so uncertain terms that the French would be incredibly particular about one thing: food. They’d want to eat decadently in fine, full-service restaurants dripping in elegance and European glamour.
And so, there in the park’s Adventureland opened The Explorers Club, an out-of-Africa style gentleman’s club; a colonial estate tucked away in the dense, uncharted jungle. Consider it an “Adventurers Club lite,” set beautifully within one of the most breathtaking Disney Parks ever built. With veranda views of waterfalls, a room built around a towering tree filled with “living” birds, global artifacts, and even interactions between Audio-Animatronics and actors, The Explorers Club might’ve indeed been an accessible European chapter of the Pleasure Island original!
…Except that, shortly after opening, Disney designers were baffled to discover that European visitors didn’t want the park’s upscale, elegant restaurants as promised… They wanted hot dogs… hamburgers… pizza! Unbelievably, the short-lived Explorers Club closed in the park’s first year, re-opening as Colonel Hathi’s Pizza Outpost, a quick-service restaurant lightly themed to The Jungle Book.
Still, one need only look around to recogize that this surprisingly detailed location is meant for much more than a counter service pizza parlor… Remnants of the Explorers Club abound, if you know where to look.
2. Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar
Location: Disneyland Hotel
Opened: 2011
Opening in 2011 at the Disneyland Hotel in California, Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar is perhaps the best example of Disney capturing the viral appeal, dense detail, and spectacular mini-shows that made The Adventurers Club so appealing. Inside the miniscule, thatch-roofed bar (with enough seating for less than 20 groups), guests are immersed into a hut whose walls are lined with newspaper clippings (announcing, among other things, the discovery of the legendary Temple of the Forbidden Eye by famed archaeologist Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones), exotic artifacts, and more.
Like its namesake Adventureland attraction – the Modern Marvel: Enchanted Tiki Room – the bar is supported by totem poles which move their eyes and mouths… though here, it’s so imperceptively slowly, you may not notice until someone asks, “Wait… wasn’t it looking the other way a minute ago?” Most spectacularly, the friendly bartenders offer a host of one-of-a-kind drinks.
Ordering one typically results in the bar coming amazingly and unexpectedly to life… sinking ships-in-a-bottle, erupting volcanoes outside the window, sprays of water, or – at least at Walt Disney World’s spin-off Trader Sam’s Grog Grotto – awakening the ancient goddess Uh-Oa from the Declassified Disaster: The Enchanted Tiki Room – Under New Management.
What the Tiki Bar lacks in size or notoriety it makes up for in fun… a 21st century evolution of the Adventurers Club concept.
3. The Skipper Canteen
Location: Magic Kingdom
Opened: 2015
Naturally, the spirit of the Adventurers Club extended into its closest living relative, Adventureland at Magic Kingdom. As with S.E.A., it’s fair to imagine that – in Disney’s continuity – the Adventurers Club and Adventureland might be pieces of the same story… they are, after all, set in the same pre-World-War-II period, and both heavily painted with romantic exoticism detailing the clash between the wild unknown and the high society of the Western world.
As you might expect, references to the Club and its prominent members were located throughout the Jungle Cruise’s boathouse – for example, the “luggage” that creates the Jungle Cruise’s FastPass distribution machines included travel trunks belonging to Emil and Pamelia, and artifacts in the queue marked as being on loan from the Adventurers Club’s private collection.
In 2016, the long awaited Skipper Canteen restaurant opened across from the Jungle Cruise in Magic Kingdom. Ostensibly owned and operated by the same Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd. that charters the skipper-led boat tours across the plaza, the restaurant naturally echoes heavily of S.E.A. and the Adventurers Club, borrowing a few artifacts from each. It also offers a surprisingly robust menu of truly exotic offerings matching the proprietor Albert Falls’ international taste… one menu item? The Kungaloosh cake.
4. Tropical Hideaway
Location: Disneyland Park
Opened: 2018
Disneyland’s own fan-favorite tiki bar opened in 2018. Wedged into the space between the Enchanted Tiki Room and the Jungle Cruise (where the Tahitian Terrace dinner theater had beenfrom the ’60s), the Tropical Hideaway is a creative collision of the stylings of the Tiki Room, S.E.A., the Adventurers Club, and Indiana Jones Adventure.
In fact, a wall of oars bearing plaques honor the record-breaking rapids runs of not just S.E.A. members (like H. Hightower, A. Falls, and M. Oceaneer) but also M. A. Merriweather – founder and proprietor of Pleasure Island and the Adventurers Club, once more swirling mythologies in a nod to fans.
Kungaloosh!
At its heart, the Adventurers Club was an experiment… it fused Disney’s signature storytelling and special effects with the spirit of community and creativity. Perhaps more than any attraction in any Disney Park, the Adventurers Club allowed guests to become someone new; to truly step into an adventure; to become part of an ever-changing community of misfits, explorers, and friends.
It’s hard even in retrospect to say exactly what it was… a club? A restaurant? An attraction? A bar? A walkthrough funhouse? A show? Ultimately, the answer is “all of the above.” An early entry in the genre of living, immersive theater that’s now swept across the country by way of immersive entertainment and escape rooms, the concept still feels timeless, even thirty years after its opening and ten years after its closing.
While fans may forever clamor for a look inside Disneyland’s sought-after Club 33, we counter that it’s the Adventurers Club we’d do better to remember. After all, “We are reckless, brave, and loyal, and valiant to the end. If you come in here a stranger, you will exit as a friend.”
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If you felt a tinge of nostalgia catching up on the history of Downtown Disney and its esteemed Adventurers Club, make the jump over to our Lost Legends page, packed with the secret histories of Disney’s closed classics, modern masterpieces, and disastrous flops. And don’t forget to share your memories, thoughts, and dreams of the Adventurers Club in the comments below!